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5.11 Failure of Reconstruction

7 min readjanuary 12, 2023

Robby May

Robby May

Caleb Lagerwey

Caleb Lagerwey

Dalia Savy

Dalia Savy

Robby May

Robby May

Caleb Lagerwey

Caleb Lagerwey

Dalia Savy

Dalia Savy

Reconstruction Loopholes

Despite the promises of Reconstruction, there were setbacks and constant resistance from down South. For example, all the Reconstruction Amendments had loopholes.

Convict Leasing and Sharecropping

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. However, and were two practices that followed this amendment and the abolition of slavery.

  • was a system in which state and local governments would lease out prisoners to private businesses and individuals, who would then use the prisoners as a source of labor. Black people convicted of crimes had to basically work for companies, for free, in terrible conditions.

  • was a system in which a landowner would allow a tenant to farm their land in exchange for a share of the crop. This system was a new form of coerced labor in the South and was used to keep Black people tied to the land after the abolition of slavery.

    • Blacks worked in families on a piece of land for a fixed share of the crop, usually 1/2. This was good for the landowners because it didn’t require much expenditure in advance of the harvest.

    • The tenant also shared the risk of crop failure or a fall in cotton prices. Croppers had to live on credit until their cotton was sold, and plantation owners used the chance to provision them at high prices.

    • Creditors were entitled to deduct what was owed to them out of the tenants' share of the crop, and this left most Croppers with no net profit at the end of the year….often with a debt that had to be worked off. was often considered slavery by another name.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/fiveable-92889.appspot.com/o/images%2Fsharecropping_800_loc-z81sdqTrVGZz.jpg?alt=media&token=8316f134-c6c4-481c-85c5-19a339fe60fa

Image Courtesy of PBS

Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws

The 14th Amendment granted Black people citizenship and equal protection under the laws. However, there were loopholes here as well.

  • Black Codes were laws passed to control the movement and behavior of newly freed Black people and to restrict their rights to property, work, and legal representation. The also criminalized many activities, such as vagrancy, that were used to arrest and detain African Americans and force them into involuntary labor.

    • This was one of the worst : the Vagrancy Laws. These criminalized homelessness and unemployment and worked directly with . Many freed Black people were forced to work for their former owners again.

  • After 1877, the were set in place. These laws only applied to Black people and thus segregated them despite allegedly being equal. The name Jim Crow came from an antebellum minstrel show figure first popularized by who blackened his face and sang a song called “Jump Jim Crow.”

    • These laws mandated racial segregation in public spaces and institutions, such as schools, public transportation, and public accommodations.

    • They also restricted the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of Black people (such as equal access to public infrastructure and voting).

    • The "separate but equal" doctrine established by the Supreme Court case was used to justify and legitimize this system of racial segregation and discrimination that existed throughout the Southern United States.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/fiveable-92889.appspot.com/o/images%2F-2ui8coLM4MFo.jpg?alt=media&token=22c66912-a524-46e7-8959-86bfb3a1f2ab

Image Courtesy of Howard University School of Law Library

  • The Supreme Court further undermined the 14th Amendment in the and the which made this Amendment impossible to enforce.

    • The , officially known as , dealt with the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. It basically said that 14th Amendment rights only applied to federal citizenship, not state citizenship.

    • The , officially known as United States v. Cruikshank, dealt with the prosecution of white supremacist individuals who were charged with violating the civil rights of African Americans during the Colfax Massacre of 1873 in Louisiana. We'll discuss this Massacre in the next section, but it basically ruled that the federal government did not have the authority to prosecute individuals for violating the civil rights of Black people. In other words, the protection of civil rights was primarily the responsibility of the states.

Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and Grandfather Clauses

The 15th Amendment granted Black men voting rights, but there were so many ways created to prevent them from actually voting.

  • African Americans in the South were subject to violence and intimidation, including lynching and shootings, in order to prevent them from exercising their right to vote and from holding political power. This type of violence was often carried out by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other similar organizations, as well as by individual white supremacists.

    • One notable example of this type of violence is the Colfax Massacre of 1873, in which a white supremacist group killed at least 150 African American men in Colfax, Louisiana, after a disputed election. This event is considered one of the worst acts of racial violence in the United States.

  • Because of the , Black people were disenfranchised through , , and .

    • were a voting restriction that created a fee individuals were required to pay in order to vote. They were often used in conjunction with .

    • were a type of voting restriction that was used in the Southern United States during the Jim Crow era. These tests were designed to be difficult and subjective, and they were administered at the discretion of white election officials. As a result, many African Americans were denied the right to vote even if they were literate.

    • The grandfather clause was a loophole in some of the state's literacy test laws that allowed people who were unable to pass the test to vote if their grandfathers were eligible to vote before the Civil War. This exemption was used to allow white people to vote, while effectively denying the right to vote to African Americans, even if they were literate.

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

and were terms used to describe certain groups of people during the Reconstruction era in the United States, following the Civil War. More specifically, Democratic opponents gave these nicknames to their Republican rivals.

They called Southern Republicans “” and Northern newcomers “”. For more information...

  1. were white Southerners who supported the Republican Party and the Reconstruction efforts to rebuild the South and provide civil rights for African Americans. They were often viewed as traitors by other white Southerners, who saw them as collaborating with the "enemy" (the North) and seeking political power and economic gain at the expense of the South.

  2. were Northern businessmen and politicians who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era to take advantage of the economic opportunities that were created by the rebuilding of the region. They were often viewed as opportunistic outsiders who were exploiting the South for their own gain.

These two terms are considered derogatory.

Grant’s Presidency and Scandal

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Ulysses_S._Grant_1870-1880.jpg

Image Courtesy of Wikimedia

The postwar years were notorious for the corrupt schemes devised by business bosses and political bosses to enrich themselves at the public’s expense.

  • Wall Street financiers obtained the help of President Grant’s brother-in-law in a scheme to corner the gold market.

  • In the , insiders gave stock to influential members of Congress to avoid investigation of the profits they were making, as high as 348% from government subsidies for building the transcontinental railroad.

  • In the case of the , federal revenue agents conspired with the liquor industry to defraud the government of millions in taxes.

  • Grant’s secretary of war was impeached by the House after an investigation revealed he had taken bribes for selling Indian trading posts.

Reconstruction Ends

Even after (1869-1877) and the elimination of the KKK by 1871 because of the , Reconstruction would eventually fail. This was because the South resisted it and the North got sick of having to enforce it and protect Black rights for so long in the face of resistance. 

Reconstruction ended in 1877 with the . This was a deal in which the Northern Republicans got Rutherford B. Hayes elected as president. In exchange, the Southern Democrats got an end to the military occupation of the South (called the ) since they promised to respect Black rights. That...did not go so well. 

Despite the enormous potential of achieving basic racial equality, the Amendments in the Constitution would be mostly useless for African Americans for almost 100 years…

The New South

Proponents of the envisioned a post-Reconstruction Southern economy modeled on the North’s embrace of the Industrial Revolution. An Atlanta, Georgia newspaper coined the phrase "” in 1874. The writer urged the South to abandon its longstanding agrarian economy for a modern economy grounded in factories, mines, and mills.

Key Terms to Review (24)

Bayonet Rule

: Bayonet Rule refers to the period during Reconstruction after the American Civil War when federal troops were stationed in Southern states to enforce laws and protect African Americans' rights.

Black Codes

: These were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, with the intent to restrict African Americans' freedom and compel them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

Carpetbaggers

: Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War during Reconstruction to profit from the unstable situation.

Compromise of 1877

: The Compromise of 1877 was an unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in Republican Rutherford B. Hayes being awarded the presidency in exchange for removing federal troops from Southern states, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Convict Leasing

: This was a system where private businesses would lease prisoners from state governments for labor. It was prevalent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in Southern U.S. states.

Credit Mobilier affair

: The Credit Mobilier affair was a political scandal in the early 1870s involving Union Pacific Railroad's fraudulent contracts with Credit Mobilier, a construction company it controlled. Several prominent politicians were implicated when it was revealed they had accepted bribes or discounted shares from the company.

Cruikshank case

: The Cruikshank case, officially known as United States v. Cruikshank (1876), was a Supreme Court case that ruled the federal government could not punish individuals for civil rights violations; only states had that power.

Enforcement Acts

: The Enforcement Acts were three bills passed by Congress between May 1870 and April 1871 designed to protect African-Americans' right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection under law during Reconstruction.

Grandfather Clauses

: Grandfather clauses were provisions set up by several Southern states after Reconstruction which allowed potential white voters who failed literacy tests or could not afford poll taxes to still be eligible for voting if their grandfathers had been eligible to vote.

Jay Gould and James Fisk

: Jay Gould and James Fisk were notorious American financiers in the late 19th century. They are best known for their attempt to corner the gold market during the "Black Friday" scandal of 1869.

Jim Crow Laws

: These were state and local laws enacted primarily by Southern states between 1877 and mid-1960s enforcing racial segregation in public facilities under a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

: The Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated as KKK, was a white supremacist group that emerged during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. They used violence and intimidation to suppress African Americans and their allies.

Literacy Tests

: Literacy tests were used as a requirement that voters demonstrate basic reading skills before being allowed to cast ballots. Like poll taxes, these tests were often used in the South during Jim Crow era as another method to disenfranchise African American voters.

Munn v. Illinois

: A U.S Supreme Court case in 1877 that upheld the power of government to regulate private industries, particularly railroads and grain warehouse operations.

New South

: The term "New South" describes a time period from 1877-1914 where Southern states attempted economic transformation by focusing more on industry rather than their traditional agrarian economy.

Plessy v. Ferguson

: A landmark Supreme Court case in 1896 that upheld racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal."

Poll Taxes

: A poll tax is a fee that was required to be paid in order for an individual to vote. This was used primarily in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to prevent African Americans from voting.

Reconstruction Loopholes

: These were legal or political strategies used by Southern states during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) to circumvent federal laws and policies designed to ensure equal rights for African Americans.

Scalawags

: Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated with Northern Republicans during Reconstruction for personal gain or out of political conviction.

Sharecropping

: This was an agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War, where landowners allowed tenants to use their land in exchange for a share of the crops produced.

Slaughterhouse Cases

: A group of U.S. Supreme Court cases in 1873 that limited the protection of the privileges or immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution.

Thomas “Daddy” Rice

: He was a white American performer and playwright who is considered the 'father of American minstrelsy'. His blackface character "Jim Crow" was a racial caricature that became synonymous with racist stereotypes.

Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency

: The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, and ended on March 4, 1877. Grant, a Republican, took office after defeating Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1868 election. His presidency was marked by efforts to stabilize the nation during Reconstruction and controversy over corruption within his administration.

Whiskey Ring

: The Whiskey Ring was a scandal during the Grant administration in the 1870s involving a group of government officials and whiskey producers who defrauded the federal government of tax revenues.

5.11 Failure of Reconstruction

7 min readjanuary 12, 2023

Robby May

Robby May

Caleb Lagerwey

Caleb Lagerwey

Dalia Savy

Dalia Savy

Robby May

Robby May

Caleb Lagerwey

Caleb Lagerwey

Dalia Savy

Dalia Savy

Reconstruction Loopholes

Despite the promises of Reconstruction, there were setbacks and constant resistance from down South. For example, all the Reconstruction Amendments had loopholes.

Convict Leasing and Sharecropping

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. However, and were two practices that followed this amendment and the abolition of slavery.

  • was a system in which state and local governments would lease out prisoners to private businesses and individuals, who would then use the prisoners as a source of labor. Black people convicted of crimes had to basically work for companies, for free, in terrible conditions.

  • was a system in which a landowner would allow a tenant to farm their land in exchange for a share of the crop. This system was a new form of coerced labor in the South and was used to keep Black people tied to the land after the abolition of slavery.

    • Blacks worked in families on a piece of land for a fixed share of the crop, usually 1/2. This was good for the landowners because it didn’t require much expenditure in advance of the harvest.

    • The tenant also shared the risk of crop failure or a fall in cotton prices. Croppers had to live on credit until their cotton was sold, and plantation owners used the chance to provision them at high prices.

    • Creditors were entitled to deduct what was owed to them out of the tenants' share of the crop, and this left most Croppers with no net profit at the end of the year….often with a debt that had to be worked off. was often considered slavery by another name.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/fiveable-92889.appspot.com/o/images%2Fsharecropping_800_loc-z81sdqTrVGZz.jpg?alt=media&token=8316f134-c6c4-481c-85c5-19a339fe60fa

Image Courtesy of PBS

Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws

The 14th Amendment granted Black people citizenship and equal protection under the laws. However, there were loopholes here as well.

  • Black Codes were laws passed to control the movement and behavior of newly freed Black people and to restrict their rights to property, work, and legal representation. The also criminalized many activities, such as vagrancy, that were used to arrest and detain African Americans and force them into involuntary labor.

    • This was one of the worst : the Vagrancy Laws. These criminalized homelessness and unemployment and worked directly with . Many freed Black people were forced to work for their former owners again.

  • After 1877, the were set in place. These laws only applied to Black people and thus segregated them despite allegedly being equal. The name Jim Crow came from an antebellum minstrel show figure first popularized by who blackened his face and sang a song called “Jump Jim Crow.”

    • These laws mandated racial segregation in public spaces and institutions, such as schools, public transportation, and public accommodations.

    • They also restricted the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of Black people (such as equal access to public infrastructure and voting).

    • The "separate but equal" doctrine established by the Supreme Court case was used to justify and legitimize this system of racial segregation and discrimination that existed throughout the Southern United States.

https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/fiveable-92889.appspot.com/o/images%2F-2ui8coLM4MFo.jpg?alt=media&token=22c66912-a524-46e7-8959-86bfb3a1f2ab

Image Courtesy of Howard University School of Law Library

  • The Supreme Court further undermined the 14th Amendment in the and the which made this Amendment impossible to enforce.

    • The , officially known as , dealt with the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. It basically said that 14th Amendment rights only applied to federal citizenship, not state citizenship.

    • The , officially known as United States v. Cruikshank, dealt with the prosecution of white supremacist individuals who were charged with violating the civil rights of African Americans during the Colfax Massacre of 1873 in Louisiana. We'll discuss this Massacre in the next section, but it basically ruled that the federal government did not have the authority to prosecute individuals for violating the civil rights of Black people. In other words, the protection of civil rights was primarily the responsibility of the states.

Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and Grandfather Clauses

The 15th Amendment granted Black men voting rights, but there were so many ways created to prevent them from actually voting.

  • African Americans in the South were subject to violence and intimidation, including lynching and shootings, in order to prevent them from exercising their right to vote and from holding political power. This type of violence was often carried out by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other similar organizations, as well as by individual white supremacists.

    • One notable example of this type of violence is the Colfax Massacre of 1873, in which a white supremacist group killed at least 150 African American men in Colfax, Louisiana, after a disputed election. This event is considered one of the worst acts of racial violence in the United States.

  • Because of the , Black people were disenfranchised through , , and .

    • were a voting restriction that created a fee individuals were required to pay in order to vote. They were often used in conjunction with .

    • were a type of voting restriction that was used in the Southern United States during the Jim Crow era. These tests were designed to be difficult and subjective, and they were administered at the discretion of white election officials. As a result, many African Americans were denied the right to vote even if they were literate.

    • The grandfather clause was a loophole in some of the state's literacy test laws that allowed people who were unable to pass the test to vote if their grandfathers were eligible to vote before the Civil War. This exemption was used to allow white people to vote, while effectively denying the right to vote to African Americans, even if they were literate.

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers

and were terms used to describe certain groups of people during the Reconstruction era in the United States, following the Civil War. More specifically, Democratic opponents gave these nicknames to their Republican rivals.

They called Southern Republicans “” and Northern newcomers “”. For more information...

  1. were white Southerners who supported the Republican Party and the Reconstruction efforts to rebuild the South and provide civil rights for African Americans. They were often viewed as traitors by other white Southerners, who saw them as collaborating with the "enemy" (the North) and seeking political power and economic gain at the expense of the South.

  2. were Northern businessmen and politicians who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era to take advantage of the economic opportunities that were created by the rebuilding of the region. They were often viewed as opportunistic outsiders who were exploiting the South for their own gain.

These two terms are considered derogatory.

Grant’s Presidency and Scandal

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Ulysses_S._Grant_1870-1880.jpg

Image Courtesy of Wikimedia

The postwar years were notorious for the corrupt schemes devised by business bosses and political bosses to enrich themselves at the public’s expense.

  • Wall Street financiers obtained the help of President Grant’s brother-in-law in a scheme to corner the gold market.

  • In the , insiders gave stock to influential members of Congress to avoid investigation of the profits they were making, as high as 348% from government subsidies for building the transcontinental railroad.

  • In the case of the , federal revenue agents conspired with the liquor industry to defraud the government of millions in taxes.

  • Grant’s secretary of war was impeached by the House after an investigation revealed he had taken bribes for selling Indian trading posts.

Reconstruction Ends

Even after (1869-1877) and the elimination of the KKK by 1871 because of the , Reconstruction would eventually fail. This was because the South resisted it and the North got sick of having to enforce it and protect Black rights for so long in the face of resistance. 

Reconstruction ended in 1877 with the . This was a deal in which the Northern Republicans got Rutherford B. Hayes elected as president. In exchange, the Southern Democrats got an end to the military occupation of the South (called the ) since they promised to respect Black rights. That...did not go so well. 

Despite the enormous potential of achieving basic racial equality, the Amendments in the Constitution would be mostly useless for African Americans for almost 100 years…

The New South

Proponents of the envisioned a post-Reconstruction Southern economy modeled on the North’s embrace of the Industrial Revolution. An Atlanta, Georgia newspaper coined the phrase "” in 1874. The writer urged the South to abandon its longstanding agrarian economy for a modern economy grounded in factories, mines, and mills.

Key Terms to Review (24)

Bayonet Rule

: Bayonet Rule refers to the period during Reconstruction after the American Civil War when federal troops were stationed in Southern states to enforce laws and protect African Americans' rights.

Black Codes

: These were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War, with the intent to restrict African Americans' freedom and compel them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.

Carpetbaggers

: Carpetbaggers were Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War during Reconstruction to profit from the unstable situation.

Compromise of 1877

: The Compromise of 1877 was an unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in Republican Rutherford B. Hayes being awarded the presidency in exchange for removing federal troops from Southern states, effectively ending Reconstruction.

Convict Leasing

: This was a system where private businesses would lease prisoners from state governments for labor. It was prevalent during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in Southern U.S. states.

Credit Mobilier affair

: The Credit Mobilier affair was a political scandal in the early 1870s involving Union Pacific Railroad's fraudulent contracts with Credit Mobilier, a construction company it controlled. Several prominent politicians were implicated when it was revealed they had accepted bribes or discounted shares from the company.

Cruikshank case

: The Cruikshank case, officially known as United States v. Cruikshank (1876), was a Supreme Court case that ruled the federal government could not punish individuals for civil rights violations; only states had that power.

Enforcement Acts

: The Enforcement Acts were three bills passed by Congress between May 1870 and April 1871 designed to protect African-Americans' right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection under law during Reconstruction.

Grandfather Clauses

: Grandfather clauses were provisions set up by several Southern states after Reconstruction which allowed potential white voters who failed literacy tests or could not afford poll taxes to still be eligible for voting if their grandfathers had been eligible to vote.

Jay Gould and James Fisk

: Jay Gould and James Fisk were notorious American financiers in the late 19th century. They are best known for their attempt to corner the gold market during the "Black Friday" scandal of 1869.

Jim Crow Laws

: These were state and local laws enacted primarily by Southern states between 1877 and mid-1960s enforcing racial segregation in public facilities under a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

: The Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated as KKK, was a white supremacist group that emerged during the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. They used violence and intimidation to suppress African Americans and their allies.

Literacy Tests

: Literacy tests were used as a requirement that voters demonstrate basic reading skills before being allowed to cast ballots. Like poll taxes, these tests were often used in the South during Jim Crow era as another method to disenfranchise African American voters.

Munn v. Illinois

: A U.S Supreme Court case in 1877 that upheld the power of government to regulate private industries, particularly railroads and grain warehouse operations.

New South

: The term "New South" describes a time period from 1877-1914 where Southern states attempted economic transformation by focusing more on industry rather than their traditional agrarian economy.

Plessy v. Ferguson

: A landmark Supreme Court case in 1896 that upheld racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal."

Poll Taxes

: A poll tax is a fee that was required to be paid in order for an individual to vote. This was used primarily in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a way to prevent African Americans from voting.

Reconstruction Loopholes

: These were legal or political strategies used by Southern states during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) to circumvent federal laws and policies designed to ensure equal rights for African Americans.

Scalawags

: Scalawags were white Southerners who cooperated with Northern Republicans during Reconstruction for personal gain or out of political conviction.

Sharecropping

: This was an agricultural system that emerged after the Civil War, where landowners allowed tenants to use their land in exchange for a share of the crops produced.

Slaughterhouse Cases

: A group of U.S. Supreme Court cases in 1873 that limited the protection of the privileges or immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution.

Thomas “Daddy” Rice

: He was a white American performer and playwright who is considered the 'father of American minstrelsy'. His blackface character "Jim Crow" was a racial caricature that became synonymous with racist stereotypes.

Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency

: The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, and ended on March 4, 1877. Grant, a Republican, took office after defeating Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1868 election. His presidency was marked by efforts to stabilize the nation during Reconstruction and controversy over corruption within his administration.

Whiskey Ring

: The Whiskey Ring was a scandal during the Grant administration in the 1870s involving a group of government officials and whiskey producers who defrauded the federal government of tax revenues.


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AP® and SAT® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse this website.


© 2024 Fiveable Inc. All rights reserved.

AP® and SAT® are trademarks registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse this website.